In twenty essays prefaced by a historical introduction this volume surveys key features of
the last two hundred years of theatre in what was the principal theatrical centre of central
Europe until the First World War relating key playwrights plays and institutional
developments to the political and intellectual context that has helped shape them. The studies
combine to give a picture of conservative and progressive movements in Viennese theatre from
the aesthetic and political conservatism of the early nineteenth century to the innovations of
the great period of Viennese modernism at the turn of the century renewed conservatism in the
inter-war years and the resurgence in the last two decades of the twentieth century of an
outspokenly critical treatment of right-wing politics.
